Here at the Career and Jobs division of TheQuarterRoll.com, my team and I
get emails from desperate job seekers every week asking for help or advice
in finding work. After so many requests, we have identified the top 7
biggest struggles job seekers say they have when looking for a new job. We
will list them here and offer advice on each one.

1. When I apply for jobs online, it is not uncommon for me to get no
response from the company. I don't even know if a human being got my
resume.

Suggestion: If you want a new job, you need to talk to a person, not a
machine. Skip the online application process, and go to a job fair where
you can meet real people and tell them why you are a great fit for their
company.

2. Applying for a job, hearing back from an employer, scheduling an
interview, etc. takes forever.

Suggestion: The best way to speed up your job search is meeting multiple
employers at the same time. Job fairs are kind of like speed dating. In
one day, at one location, you can meet many employers, shaving weeks, even
months, off the time needed to find a job that fits your goals and skills.

3. The good jobs are not advertised.

Suggestion: That is mostly true. Most jobs (approximately 80%) are not
advertised through traditional outlets. If you are lucky, you may know
someone who can tell you about open or new positions in a company.
However, are you going to know 100 people from 100 companies who will all
be reporting unadvertised, open positions to you? Probably not. Your best
bet is attending a job fair where you can directly ask the hiring manager
at each booth what positions they have, which jobs will soon be available,
and where your skills would be a good match.

4. I don't know many people who can help me find a new job. I have a
small, disengaged network.

Suggestion: All the conventional advice published by the career media
outlets says building and participating in an actively engaged network of
peers and industry leaders is critical, yet few people actually accomplish
this. It takes a lot of time and effort to build a professional network.
If you find yourself looking for work and you have a relatively small
network to lean on, go to a job fair. At a job fair, you can talk directly
to company representatives and meet people in person you may not have had
access to otherwise.

5. I have no idea who the hiring manager is for the company I want to
work for, so I end up sending my resume to a general email alias where I
have no idea who gets it.

Suggestion: Even with tools like LinkedIn, it is often very difficult to
determine exactly who the hiring manager is for an open position.
Additionally, company gatekeepers are often instructed to guard the
manager's privacy and not give you their contact information. At a job
fair, companies staff their booths with recruiters, hiring managers and HR
representatives. Exactly the people you need to talk to. Go to the job
fair, find the companies you want to work for, and introduce yourself to
these people face to face!

6. Ok. I understand that if I am going to apply for jobs online, it's
going to take lots and lots of applications just to get a few responses,
but if I had to drive to 100 employers' locations it would take me months
to drop off my resumes.

Suggestion: What if you could spend one day meeting 100 hiring managers
face to face and getting their contact information? When you use job
fairs, there is no need to drive to hundreds of businesses in order to put
your resume into the hands of a human being. Job fairs bring all the
hiring managers together in one spot. Itís not uncommon for a job fair to
have 80-120 employers present. You could literally hand out 100 physical
copies of your resume, meet 100 hiring managers, and get the direct
contact information of all 100 of them for follow up later. You will never
do that online, and it would take you months to get in your car and do it
one recruiter at a time.

Suggestion: You might as well write "Throw me away" on your resume if you
send it to a general email alias. At a minimum, you need to know the
hiring manager's name and contact information. Most Human Resources staff
do not publish their contact information online. Would you? Think about
the flood of spam and useless emails you would get. Job fair events are
different though. Company representatives gladly hand over business cards
that contain a gold mine of contact information. You can use that
information to cut through all the barriers companies set up to screen
applicants and get your resume directly to the right person.

Bottom line: Include job fairs in your toolbox of job search
options. In an online age, this offline event continues to prove itself as
a superior way of connecting job seekers to employers.